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Saturday, May 6, 2017

Fishing Boats of Orchid Island’s Tao People

Tao tatara boats, with and without culturally significant decorations. (source) Click any image to enlarge.

Orchid
Island, also known as Lanyu, is about 45 miles due east of the southernmost
point of Taiwan. Only 7.5 miles long, it is home to a culture best known as the
Yami, although the people themselves prefer the name Tao, which means simply
“people” in their language. Numbering about 4,000, the Tao, a Malayo-Polynesian
people, make up about two thirds of the island’s population, the remainder
being Han Chinese from Taiwan.

Although
Lanyu is now part of the Republic of China, there was little cultural contact
with Taiwan until the second half of the twentieth century, leaving Tao society
relatively intact and among the least
affected by outside influences of all Southeast Asian cultures. The people continue
to speak their own language and are culturally more akin to the inhabitants of Batanes,
the northernmost province of the Philippines, about 100 miles across the Bashi
Channel. They are the only of Taiwan’s remaining aboriginal peoples with a
maritime culture.

Lanyu
is mountainous, of volcanic origin. Much of it is covered by tropical rainforest,
parts of which are untouched. “Coral reefs are distributed around the island
and the warm Japan Current also flows by, attracting vast schools of fish.” (source)

Flying
fish play a central role in the culture of the Tao, their migrations
determining the Tao’s annual cycle of ritual and economic activities. The boats
used to fish for flying fish are “a central cultural
emblem,”
and so distinctive as to have become the island’s best-known cultural artifact
and image for tourism.

The
Tao’s boats range from the 1- and 2-man tatara,
about 2.3m long, to the 10- and even 14-man chinedkulan,
at 7.6m long. All are of similar form and construction, their most obvious
distinguishing features being the extremely high extensions of the stem and
sternposts that sweep up sharply but gracefully from the gunwales, and the
elaborate carved-and-painted decoration of the hulls.

Tao
boats show similarities to those of Batanes, to the mon of the Solomon Islands, and to those of Lamalera, on the island
of Lembata in Indonesia. Chinedkulan are
notably seaworthy, having formerly been used for voyages to Batanes (but apparently
no longer so used). Tatara are said
to be quite unstable and are used only in protected waters in calm conditions.

The Tatara and Chinedkulan Hulls

Structural cross-section of a chinedkulan. "Botel Tobago" is another name for Lanyu or Orchid Island. Image source: R. H. Barnes (see bibliography)

Built
on a keel with separate stem and sternpost, the hull is symmetrical
fore-and-aft, V-bottomed, and chined. It is built shell-first, with frames that
(at least, on the chinedkulan) do not
reach to the topmost strake. Thwarts, too, span the second-to-top strakes, not
the topmost ones. Making up for this, a strong shelf near the lower edge of the
top strake provides a great deal of rigidity. The shelf is not attached to the
plank as a separate component but, rather, is carved as an integral part of the
planks of the top strakes. Each strake consists of three plank sections. The
larger chinedkulan has four strakes,
the tatara three.

Detail of lashed-lug construction between frame and planks in a Tao tatara. Source: R. H. Barnes

The
smooth-planked (i.e., carvel) hull is of lashed-lug construction. When each
plank is gotten out, “comb cleats” (pairs of lugs with a short gap between) are
left on the inside surface. Holes are bored in the lugs. The U-shaped frames are
placed in the gap between the cleats and tied in place with rattan lashings.
But before this happens, the strakes are assembled to the keel and to one
another by blind-pegging. The upper edge of each plank is drilled with numerous
holes – from photos, it appears that they are spaced rather closely, perhaps 4”
apart. Dowels are inserted in the holes, and the next plank, with corresponding
holes, is forced down against the lower one. Joints are caulked with vegetable
fiber.

The
planking has three sets of lugs: one set, amidships, holds the frames. The smaller
boats have a single frame amidships. The larger ones have two frames, dividing
the hull approximately in thirds lengthwise. The second set of lugs, appearing
at one end only, is used to fasten a transverse bulkhead. The third set,
appearing at both ends, holds lashings to pull the port and starboard planks in
toward each other. It’s unclear how the hood ends are fastened to the endposts,
or how the butt joints between the plank sections are fastened.

Tatara with single frame amidships. Also shown are shelf near the bottom of the sheerstrake and a transverse bulkhead at right. Source: R.H. Barnes

The
backbone consists of three pieces – the V-shaped keel and two endposts – joined
in a stepped joint (and presumably pegged).

The
boats are rowed with oars that pivot against a kind of tholepin structure that
consists of two or three posts arranged with their bottoms splayed fore-and-aft
and their tops, which rise high above the gunwale, lashed together with many
wraps of heavy rope. The bottom ends appear to penetrate the shelf that runs
near the lower edge of the topmost strake, and perhaps are held in place by lugs
in the planking below the shelf.

To
begin construction, trees are felled with an ax, and planks are shaped with an
adze, each trunk yielding a single plank or backbone section. The center of the
trunk becomes a plank’s outer surface. The endposts, in order to avoid grain
run-out in the rapidly curved transition from the horizontal to the vertical, are
gotten out from the base of a tree with buttress roots, in the manner of grown knees
in Western boatbuilding.

Much
of the construction of Tao boats is regulated by ritual. All of the major parts
of the boat must be cut from live trees, there being a prohibition against the
use of dead wood. According to Barnes, “(T)imber should be felled, worked into
rough shape and carried back to the village on the same day. The bow and stern
pieces require some twenty men taking turns to carry them across the island.” A
ceremony and celebration, with feasting, greet the men on their return to the
village.

Having
brought the major pieces back to the village, the boat is finished in a special
boatbuilding shed, using axes, adzes, chisels, gouges, and borers or a brace
and bit to produce the holes for the planking dowels.

Construction
takes two or three years. When it is complete, a boat may be painted rather
simply – usually with white topsides inside and out and a red bottom – and put
into use. It is more common, however, to apply elaborate conventional
decorations in traditional red, white and black painted and carved patterns
that represent human figures, waves, and bow oculi in the form of the sun.
Borders made of multiple bands of repeating triangles of the three colors
outline the sheer, cutwaters at bow and stern, and waterline. The tops of the
endposts are decorated with chicken feathers.

Traditional decorations includes (from left to right) the sun-like oculus, human figures, and ocean waves. (source)

The
Tao, according to a Taiwanese
government website, “consider a boat as a man’s
body. Boat-building is a sacred mission and a part of life. Owning a boat means
owning the ocean and the sky and having valor. For the Tao, boat-building is
the manifestation of divinity and beauty.” Carrying such heavy social/psychological
meaning, only boats that will be subjected to an expensive, elaborate launching
ritual may be decorated in the traditional manner.

One step
of this ritual consists of covering the boat in taro roots which, after flying
fish, is the most important staple of the Tao diet. Given the large amount of
taro required, land clearing and planting may begin three or four years prior
to the start of building the boat. After the boat is covered in tubers, they
are removed to become part of a celebratory feast (which also includes roast
pig, shared with the community but also slaughtered as a sacrifice) in which
the whole village partakes. Women wear special clothing for several days before
the ceremony. In the climax to the ritual, men, wearing the loincloths that
they also wear when fishing, circle the boat several times to guard it from evil
spirits, then lift it above their heads and throw it into the air several
times.

Tossing a newly-built chinedkulan into the air: part of the traditional launching ceremony on Lanyu. (source)

Boat Use on Lanyu (Orchid Island)

“Surrounded by sea, the Tao society is a typical maritime one. Their
annual schedule corresponds to the flying fish season. The Tao people designed
a calendar according to habitual behaviors of marine life and the movements of
ocean currents, which includes restrictions and taboos regulating the fishing
area, timing and methods.” (source)

The
Tao celebrate flying fish season with a festival consisting of 13 distinct
rituals. Flying fish are caught from March through June, but “shoulder seasons”
at both ends make the period from February to October the most important part
of the Tao’s year economically and culturally. Almost all activities during
this longer period relate to catching, preparing, distributing and storing the
fish for use throughout the year. Flying fish may not be caught outside of the
official flying fish season, although other kinds of fishing, especially for
crabs, octopus, and shellfish, occur at other times.

To
catch flying fish, the Tao boatmen work in concert with free divers. The larger
boats are rowed with one man per oar and steered with a steering oar. Nets as
long as 8 meters are spread into a U-shaped wall attached to the bottom, their
tops 2m to 4m below the water surface. Divers, numbering between 25 and 40 and remarkable
for their lung capacity, spread out some distance from the net in a half-circle
that can be up to 300m wide. Using large, whisk-like beaters that they sweep
through the water and hit against the bottom, they drive schools of fish toward
and into the net. They then gather the ends of the net together, and it is
lifted into the boat.

“After
each drive, the fish are taken to shore, removed from the net and scaled. For
scaling the Yami use stone chips. After the fish are cleaned, they are put back
into the boat, the net is loaded into the boat as well, and the group performs
one or two more drives. On a lucky day the catch may total over a thousand
fish, but such days are rare. Usually a good catch brings in five or six
hundred fish.”

The
catch is processed communally and distributed by a formula that takes account
of who owns the boat, the net, and who participated in that particular drive.

Sources:

R.H. Barnes, "Yami Boats and Boat Building in a Wider Perspective," in Ships and the Development of Maritime Technology in the Indian Ocean, David Parkin and Ruth Barnes, eds.Routledge, 2002